posted
I think, in the grand scheme of things, compared to the level of effort required to solve problems we haven't been able to solve in some 50-60 years of actively trying, you're talking about small ticket solutions rather than massive changes that are required.
Again, I didn't say those things are entirely useless - in fact I specifically said they aren't useless - they're like tasking an ant colony with building the Great Wall of China; good effort but not even close to what's needed.
We haven't made a really concerted national effort to solve poverty or racial problems in America since the mid to late 60s. And when we did, we spent billions, enlisted the aid of hundreds of thousands of volunteers and more. It moved the needle a little bit for a few years until Reagan dismantled it, and then we never really tried again. Teach for America is basically a broken system, a meat grinder the chews up idealistic young educated people and leaves them embittered and hopeless. Welfare reform in the 90s left millions behind and cuts to national and state level assistance in the last half decade have hurt even more. Incarceration rates are at all time highs for minorities. Government is even less representative of the people, and minorities have less access to the polls in many places than they did in the 70s.
If anything, we need a movement far greater than what we had in the 60s, with no signs of anything even close to it ready to materialize.
What exactly is online activity influencing if no one actually gets OFFLINE and does something?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Ok, so you saw Gaal ask what sort of things he can do, as an individual, to help make a difference and bring about change. I responded with several different suggestions as well as talking about probably over 1000 hours cumulative I've spent volunteering doing construction work, and gave him some resources as far as how he can get involved with those nonprofits - talked about lives and neighborhoods transformed - and your response is pretty much belittle those achievements because they haven't made an impact on a national level.
Yeah, get over yourself. Seriously. How the hell do you expect people to start working towards the sort of national change we need if your apparent response is to condescendingly dismiss their efforts as just not good enough? I gave Gaal some real and useful suggestions he can immediately apply to his personal life to make changes at a local level - which is about all he has the resources to accomplish - and you arrogantly swoop in and shit all over that because I didn't say "Gaal, what you really need to do is start a multi-billion dollar nonprofit and/or become the next Martin Luther King Jr. and change the political landscape of America." Just because something may be meaningless on a national level doesn't mean it isn't meaningful or even profound on a personal or local level, and ultimately the national change is going to *come* from enough people getting involved on that local level bringing about something greater.
Or, in other words, if all you have to build the Great Wall of China is ants, maybe shit-talking the handful on ants building isn't the best way to go about it.
Posts: 2222 | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
If you think Lyrhawn's frustration was directed specifically towards you or Gaal, well, you read a very different post than I did. Which is possible, subjectivity being what it is and all, but it feels a bit like when all of a sudden social justice warriors entered the conversation out of nowhere. That kind of thing cuts both ways, you know. There's a bit of a stink on painting with that brush just as much as in Lyrhawn's (supposed) 'shitting all over' Gaal's potential efforts.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
Yes, I read Lyrhawn's post as a reply to my question. Which it certainly appears to be. I think the source of my frustration here is it where his immediate response to suggestions about how to personally make a difference is "the problem is so much bigger than you that you're practically an ant in comparison." Which you'll notice I'm not disagreeing with, I just think it's a terrible response to someone genuinely interested in taking action and making a difference. I don't think I (or anyone else) was remotely under the impression I was changing the world or solving racism single-handedly, needlessly pointing it out like he did is kind of a dick move.
That being said, yes I'm probably taking it too personally, but I'm not sure it's an unwarrented response.
Edit: on second reread my earlier post is a lot more overtly hostile than intended, for which I apologize. (the "get over yourself" part, which I meant as "that sounds pretty arrogant." I'm sorry for making it more personal than really necessary, Lyrhawn)
posted
The "social justice warriors" slang has outlived its usefulness. It was spawned by GamerGate, but now you have actual racists and bigots coming out saying anyone who opposes their hatefulness is an SJW.
Posts: 42 | Registered: Apr 2015
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: While I don't think those measures are useless, per se, they also won't really do anything.
Something more concrete would be donating a significant sum of money to a charity that helps minorities in poverty.
I don't actually agree with you. Until the underlying systemic causes of poverty and racial division are addressed, charity will treat the symptoms, not the disease. And like any treatment, charity has its own adverse effects, on recipients as well as the people who give.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: Social Justice Warriors? Where?
Yes, I read Lyrhawn's post as a reply to my question. Which it certainly appears to be. I think the source of my frustration here is it where his immediate response to suggestions about how to personally make a difference is "the problem is so much bigger than you that you're practically an ant in comparison." Which you'll notice I'm not disagreeing with, I just think it's a terrible response to someone genuinely interested in taking action and making a difference. I don't think I (or anyone else) was remotely under the impression I was changing the world or solving racism single-handedly, needlessly pointing it out like he did is kind of a dick move.
I also find it frustrating. It's bizarre to tell others that their personal efforts are meaningless, when one's own efforts are directed at, well, affecting other's personal efforts. There's a trap in this sort of activism whereby the activist needs to fail constantly in order to justify his own lofty ambitions as suitably martyr-like. It's a "to the success of our impossible task," sort of thing.
And it's also just plain wrong. Lyr dismisses internet activism- liking and tweeting, etc. I myself am a vociferous critic of slactivism. However, I have real numbers. In 2014, $1.5 Trillion dollars were spent online. That's somewhere in the realm of a 200% increase over the past 10 years, and an order of magnitude increase over 15 years ago. If the trend continues, online retail will eclipse in-person retail within the decade.
And advertising money is following the same trend. What people read and associate with online matters more every day. We can vote with our feet, and more and more, we can vote with our clicks. And yes, that will matter to the people who need to make money selling the products we buy, asking for campaign donations in the places people will give them, and making the movies and television shows, and news, that we consume.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
i literally even have posts on this forum using the term before gamergate existed. maybe i can claim i invented it for gamergate. you're welcome gamergate
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Examples of usage given in the above link...
quote:#1:
A social justice warrior reads an essay about a form of internal misogyny where women and girls insult stereotypical feminine activities and characteristics in order to boost themselves over other women.
The SJW absorbs this and later complains in response to a Huffington Post article about a 10-year-old feminist's letter, because the 10-year-old called the color pink "prissy".
#2: Commnter: "I don't like getting manicures. It's too prissy."
SJW: "Oh my god, how ***ing dare you use that word, you disgusting sexist piece of ****!"
posted
On MRF's part at least, it was not a serious claim. He knows and the term goes back past GamerGate.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I like how we now have a user whose nick is literally "Men's Rights Forever" who everybody knows is Clive Candy but that's now ok I guess who just posts here in regular conversation, and nobody bats an eyelash. I wonder what it would look like if everybody here changed their nicks to their pet political/social issue.
Like, "damn it, Public Erections are Nothing to Be Ashamed Of, we've already had this discussion on the geopolitical impact of China's aggressive economic policies..."
Posts: 2222 | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, particularly by his standards he has been remarkably well behaved lately, sticking almost entirely to cinematic topics I think. Though there have been testings of the water, and I have little doubt that a splash of some thinly veiled or outright misogyny will come up again.
Then a few months after that, there will be another 'new' poster asking, "Who's Clive?"
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: More like "Subtle condescending aggressor with subsequent denial-er"
Edit: for Dogbreath
Double edit: err denial-er = denier
As (unintentionally) ironic as this may sound, I actually have no idea is this is meant to apply to me as something I do, something I complain about, something a certain someone else complains about me/someone else doing (and therefore is their pet issue), or D all of the above.
Posts: 2222 | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
No, it's a good joke, I'm just a little slow on the uptake/over analytical.
OT: Insomnia sucks man. For some reason I haven't been able to sleep more than 2-3 hours a night for the past week or so. All day at work all I can think about getting home and lying down in bed and sleeping for 12 hours straight... until I get home and suddenly can't seem to fall asleep. it's maddening.
Posts: 2222 | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: Ok, so you saw Gaal ask what sort of things he can do, as an individual, to help make a difference and bring about change. I responded with several different suggestions as well as talking about probably over 1000 hours cumulative I've spent volunteering doing construction work, and gave him some resources as far as how he can get involved with those nonprofits - talked about lives and neighborhoods transformed - and your response is pretty much belittle those achievements because they haven't made an impact on a national level.
Yeah, get over yourself. Seriously. How the hell do you expect people to start working towards the sort of national change we need if your apparent response is to condescendingly dismiss their efforts as just not good enough? I gave Gaal some real and useful suggestions he can immediately apply to his personal life to make changes at a local level - which is about all he has the resources to accomplish - and you arrogantly swoop in and shit all over that because I didn't say "Gaal, what you really need to do is start a multi-billion dollar nonprofit and/or become the next Martin Luther King Jr. and change the political landscape of America." Just because something may be meaningless on a national level doesn't mean it isn't meaningful or even profound on a personal or local level, and ultimately the national change is going to *come* from enough people getting involved on that local level bringing about something greater.
Or, in other words, if all you have to build the Great Wall of China is ants, maybe shit-talking the handful on ants building isn't the best way to go about it.
To be perfectly honest, I missed your post the first time around and was responding to Orincoro.
But to be clear, once again, I don't think that kind of volunteering is meaningless. If I did, I wouldn't have worked to found my own non-profit after college and I wouldn't have spent hundreds of hours with it trying to help a small group of high school kids in the City get a little bit ahead.
Looking back and rereading what I wrote I can totally see how you'd take it as an attack on what you're doing and what you've done, but I didn't mean it that way. It's aimed toward people who aren't doing anything at all.
The problem with ants is twofold -
1. There aren't enough ants.
2. Eventually those ants need to get together and organize.
It's not like we haven't had volunteerism for decades, and it makes an immense difference to individuals, small groups, and occasionally, entire neighborhoods. But the problem is that 50 years from now, the problems will all remain, and will require just as many or more volunteers doing just as much or more just to make people's lives tolerable without ever solving the problem.
In the Summer of 1964, COFO (a conglomerate of SNCC, CORE, NAACP and the SCLC) organized a thousand mostly white male and female college students, mostly from the north, to go into the Deep South, where they opened Freedom Schools and tried to organize the local population. They did a lot of great work. All of it was important.
But what they actually physically did while in the South paled in comparison to what happened as a result of their organizing. They came back from Freedom Summer with a whole new perspective on the world that influenced the greatest decade of political organizing of the 20th century (with the possible exception of the labor movement in the 20s). It's when they came back from Freedom Summer and organized thousands more that real systemic change came about.
Now, for those in Mississippi, I doubt they ever forgot about Freedom Summer. Those volunteers helped organize a local movement that made a brief play at the national stage before being swatted down hard by LBJ. But their lives were made immeasurably better by what came later.
So, it's not to denigrate volunteerism. It's to say, that's step one. Then there's step two. Otherwise we're just ensuring that generations to come will require a perpetual step one just to get by.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: While I don't think those measures are useless, per se, they also won't really do anything.
Something more concrete would be donating a significant sum of money to a charity that helps minorities in poverty.
I don't actually agree with you. Until the underlying systemic causes of poverty and racial division are addressed, charity will treat the symptoms, not the disease. And like any treatment, charity has its own adverse effects, on recipients as well as the people who give.
Depends on the charity, though I think it's interesting that you've flipped and made an argument I've been attacked here multiple times for supposedly making. In fact, you take it a step further by saying helping minorities is not only useless, it's actually damaging.
But I tend to disagree in the aggregate. Many rely on charity just to get by. The problem is when you only give them enough to just barely keep their heads above water. We need to throw them a lifeline and reel them in.
And of course, I obviously agree that the root causes are the real things that need to be tackled...that's the main point I've been making all along.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: Social Justice Warriors? Where?
Yes, I read Lyrhawn's post as a reply to my question. Which it certainly appears to be. I think the source of my frustration here is it where his immediate response to suggestions about how to personally make a difference is "the problem is so much bigger than you that you're practically an ant in comparison." Which you'll notice I'm not disagreeing with, I just think it's a terrible response to someone genuinely interested in taking action and making a difference. I don't think I (or anyone else) was remotely under the impression I was changing the world or solving racism single-handedly, needlessly pointing it out like he did is kind of a dick move.
I also find it frustrating. It's bizarre to tell others that their personal efforts are meaningless, when one's own efforts are directed at, well, affecting other's personal efforts. There's a trap in this sort of activism whereby the activist needs to fail constantly in order to justify his own lofty ambitions as suitably martyr-like. It's a "to the success of our impossible task," sort of thing.
And it's also just plain wrong. Lyr dismisses internet activism- liking and tweeting, etc. I myself am a vociferous critic of slactivism. However, I have real numbers. In 2014, $1.5 Trillion dollars were spent online. That's somewhere in the realm of a 200% increase over the past 10 years, and an order of magnitude increase over 15 years ago. If the trend continues, online retail will eclipse in-person retail within the decade.
And advertising money is following the same trend. What people read and associate with online matters more every day. We can vote with our feet, and more and more, we can vote with our clicks. And yes, that will matter to the people who need to make money selling the products we buy, asking for campaign donations in the places people will give them, and making the movies and television shows, and news, that we consume.
Once again, I never said meaningless. I never said useless. I also don't think the task is impossible. It's incredibly difficult, but people power can be concentrated to achieve truly incredible things. It's one of the few things I'm an optimist about. It's a problem we CAN solve.
Nothing in your last two paragraphs connects - to me - to make the point that clicking "like" has had any affect on anything. I feel like you sort of just tried to Underpants Gnome me. I don't see how your evidence leads to the point you're making.
Now Twitter, in COMBINATION with foot traffic and organizing, can do incredible things. But Twitter in that regard is an evolution of a useful too for organizing. By themselves, I still think these things are not helpful.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: Social Justice Warriors? Where?
Yes, I read Lyrhawn's post as a reply to my question. Which it certainly appears to be. I think the source of my frustration here is it where his immediate response to suggestions about how to personally make a difference is "the problem is so much bigger than you that you're practically an ant in comparison." Which you'll notice I'm not disagreeing with, I just think it's a terrible response to someone genuinely interested in taking action and making a difference. I don't think I (or anyone else) was remotely under the impression I was changing the world or solving racism single-handedly, needlessly pointing it out like he did is kind of a dick move.
That being said, yes I'm probably taking it too personally, but I'm not sure it's an unwarrented response.
Edit: on second reread my earlier post is a lot more overtly hostile than intended, for which I apologize. (the "get over yourself" part, which I meant as "that sounds pretty arrogant." I'm sorry for making it more personal than really necessary, Lyrhawn)
Apology unnecessary. We're just having a discussion.
Unless you were aiming Social Justice Warrior at me in the pejorative sense, in which case apology not accepted, and I'm done talking to you.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: While I don't think those measures are useless, per se, they also won't really do anything.
Something more concrete would be donating a significant sum of money to a charity that helps minorities in poverty.
I don't actually agree with you. Until the underlying systemic causes of poverty and racial division are addressed, charity will treat the symptoms, not the disease. And like any treatment, charity has its own adverse effects, on recipients as well as the people who give.
Depends on the charity, though I think it's interesting that you've flipped and made an argument I've been attacked here multiple times for supposedly making. In fact, you take it a step further by saying helping minorities is not only useless, it's actually damaging.
But I tend to disagree in the aggregate. Many rely on charity just to get by. The problem is when you only give them enough to just barely keep their heads above water. We need to throw them a lifeline and reel them in.
And of course, I obviously agree that the root causes are the real things that need to be tackled...that's the main point I've been making all along.
I think it's possible he's defining "charity" (as I've seen some people do it) as merely the act of giving things to people in need. If you expand that more broadly to charitable NPOs, like the organization I talked about earlier that does everything from restoring dilapidated properties to empowering local entrepreneurs and creating jobs to organizing after school programs, and definitely *does* treat the disease and not just the symptom. They've helped lift hundreds of families out of poverty in some of the worst neighborhoods of the city, and as a result have drastically lessened a lot of those "symptoms" - childhood hunger, violent crime, poor education, drug abuse - in those neighborhoods. And a lot of those changes are self-sustaining. This is an organization that - along with it's partners - gets to know the people it helps them at every step of the way as they transition out of poverty, and helps them stay out of poverty.
quote:Unless you were aiming Social Justice Warrior at me in the pejorative sense, in which case apology not accepted, and I'm done talking to you.
What? No, it's a question to Rakeesh who mentioned SJWs entering the conversation. To which I replied "where?" Did you read the post immediately before that one? It's not a term I've overly fond of.
Posts: 2222 | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
On another note, I missed one of Orincoro's posts on the last page and wanted to cover a couple points. I'm not getting back into the meat of the economics argument because I think we can just leave that where it is. Clearly we don't agree, and short of getting each other to read a thousand pages of selected material to make our points from outside sources, or a class field trip to a southern archive, I don't think we're going to bring each other around to our points.
That being said...
quote:And I think, in regard to the first point, that you're too much of a social historian to appreciate what I'm getting at.
...
Ideas are fine. They are the reasons people claim to vote for the people they end up voting for. They are rarely the real reasons people win elections. And I think underlying the idea that slavery needed to be abolished as a moral imperative (which was of course powerful), there was an economic imperative as well. People recognized, and government institutions recognized, that the dysfunction at the heart of the southern economy was a cancer on the union, economic as well as moral. De Tocqueville recognized this, as I said, decades before, and spoke of it in those terms- moral as well as economic.
I think you and I definitely come at history from different angles, possibly so much that it's impossible to really have this conversation at all since you've apparently been disregarding most of what I've said as social history nonsense.
But I think you vastly underestimate the boost the abolitionists got from the Second and Third Great Awakenings. There was a religious fire that drove a lot of them to destroy slavery as an abomination. When you look at why the average northern soldier volunteered (for those who did volunteer), I think you'll find the backbone of the army (at least the early soldiers) was made up of people who felt slavery was wrong, not people who wanted to remake the south for economic reasons so the upper classes could invest and make money.
History isn't a science, you can't always come to hard answers. But if you just assume that what everyone says is a lie and everyone is ultimately driven by money, I think you're doing history and people a pretty serious disservice and I simply don't share your worldview.
quote:Can you just stop being a dick about this? We are defining the terms that are important to us in this discussion. And I have agreed, more than once, that yes, slavery generated wealth. No one is arguing against that, except perhaps in the horrible effrontery involved in complicating that precious moral view of history that you have with the vile idea that economics motivate people to do things.
I apologize if I came off condescending or dickish. From my point of view, you were being incredibly dismissive with no small amount of condescension yourself. Of course economics motivates people. It's ONE factor that has to be accounted for when doing an historical analysis. One factor. There are many others. I don't discount numbers for the sake of reading historical diaries and love letters. I also don't discount historical diaries and love letters because I'm reading the tea leaves in a book of 19th century statistics and think I know what people must have thought 150 years ago because of those numbers.
Taken in concert, on the issue of slavery, I think the moral imperative in abolitionism was a strong, driving force. You also seem to think that I think historical populations are politically homogenous. I don't know what gave you that idea, but I absolutely don't think that.
quote:It goes more like this for me:
Lyr: Slavery generated a lot of wealth.
Me: Yeah, it did. But you have to consider that it also stood in the way of the south generating a great deal more in different ways.
Lyr: HOW DARE YOU SIR!
Everyone: Wow, what an interesting and nuanced discussion you guys are refusing to have because Lyr is "a real historian," and Orincoro is a mere musicologist, who dares to study this subject with some interest.
If you think that's my response, then I don't think you really understand what I've been saying the entire time.
Me: Slavery generated a lot of wealth.
Orincoro: Yeah it did, but I'm not sure why that matters because it was a flawed system that cold have generated a lot more wealth.
Me: Okay, even if that's true, so what? You're making an argument I don't necessarily disagree with but I'm failing to see how it connects to my larger point.
As for your second point; BS. I don't think anyone here is looking at my credentials as a reason to discredit you. And I have NEVER made an appeal to authority in order to swat down your arguments. I've argued with you on the merits of your points, not on you the person.
quote:Clearly because my end point involves discussing the fascinating subject of history without winning anything. Stay classy.
I think - once again - this demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding between us. Do you think I was trying to argue that the south couldn't have had a more productive wealth generation system? I didn't for a second make that argument. My overriding point was that we owe it to those we oppressed for a few centuries to help them out of the bad situation we put them in. My connected point was that slavery was part of what made America as wealthy as it is today.
So when it appeared to me that you were trying to argue against the idea that slavery helped make America wealthy BASED ON THE IDEA THAT IT COULD HAVE BEEN WEALTHIER, I didn't really understand what you were driving at.
Was the whole thing, to you, just a discussion on how the southern economy could have been better? If so, we were on wildly different pages the whole time.
quote:I love watching scientists talk to historians. That's meaty discussion.
And speaking of staying classy, this came off as incredibly condescending to me.
"Silly historians, let's not confuse what you do with REAL academia where scientists come up with REAL answers while you make stuff up.
Especially since you picked a weak piece of KoMs argument to attack me with since I'd already refuted everything he said. But I guess none of my points matter since I'm a silly social historian.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:What? No, it's a question to Rakeesh who mentioned SJWs entering the conversation. To which I replied "where?" Did you read the post immediately before that one? It's not a term I've overly fond of.
I did read it, but you were pretty amped up at the time and I thought you might have been speaking sarcastically about me.
And to your previous point, yeah, neither of us really defined "charity," which taken broadly could mean all sorts of things.
That's fine, I was just clarifying.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I did read it, but you were pretty amped up at the time and I thought you might have been speaking sarcastically about me.
It's kind of hard to see how as it was Rakeesh who used the term. All I did was literally ask him what he was talking about. A quick search for the term (you're not alone, sam) shows that that is the single instance I've ever used it on this forum in the 7 years I've been posting here.
Posts: 2222 | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I did read it, but you were pretty amped up at the time and I thought you might have been speaking sarcastically about me.
It's kind of hard to see how as it was Rakeesh who used the term. All I did was literally ask him what he was talking about. A quick search for the term (you're not alone, sam) shows that that is the single instance I've ever used it on this forum in the 7 years I've been posting here.
I didn't know what you knew or didn't know. But I believe what you're saying so it's all good on my end.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
A further point on historical wealth creation: Wars are expensive. If we are making some sort of credit-and-debit ledger for slavery, and counting up how much of the fruits of that forced labour is available to us today in some form, should we subtract the Civil War? And not just the direct financial costs, but the lifetime labour of that quarter-million young men who went out and "died to make men free". Think what that might have amounted to, invested in productive assets like farms and factories!
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
On the other hand, they hand-waved a lot of that money into existence by creating unbacked currency to pay soldiers and many war bills. This is money that it's unlikely would have existed if not for the war, and was America's first experiment with an unbacked currency.
I don't know as much about the history of how the treasury has created money. But you could argue the Civil War kicked off a 50 year period that lead directly to the creation of our modern financial system. Who knows what things would look like today if not for the beginning of fiat money during the Civil War.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: A further point on historical wealth creation: Wars are expensive. If we are making some sort of credit-and-debit ledger for slavery, and counting up how much of the fruits of that forced labour is available to us today in some form, should we subtract the Civil War? And not just the direct financial costs, but the lifetime labour of that quarter-million young men who went out and "died to make men free". Think what that might have amounted to, invested in productive assets like farms and factories!
All of which is, again, more on the point of 'more wealth could have been generated with a different system' which isn't actually a refutation of Lyrhawn's argument at all.
On a related note, do you dispute what he said about abolitionism being a significant early motivator for enlistment in the Union military?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: A further point on historical wealth creation: Wars are expensive. If we are making some sort of credit-and-debit ledger for slavery, and counting up how much of the fruits of that forced labour is available to us today in some form, should we subtract the Civil War? And not just the direct financial costs, but the lifetime labour of that quarter-million young men who went out and "died to make men free". Think what that might have amounted to, invested in productive assets like farms and factories!
All of which is, again, more on the point of 'more wealth could have been generated with a different system' which isn't actually a refutation of Lyrhawn's argument at all.
On a related note, do you dispute what he said about abolitionism being a significant early motivator for enlistment in the Union military?
I don't really think KoM and I are going to see eye to eye on any aspect of this discussion. If we can't even agree on the fundamental point I made, that we have a moral imperative to help those the government intentionally disadvantaged, then there's not really much point in digging into the minutiae.
I appreciate your defense throughout this thread though. Thanks Rakeesh Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:On a related note, do you dispute what he said about abolitionism being a significant early motivator for enlistment in the Union military?
I don't know, I don't remember what it was and I'm too lazy to dig through 150 posts to find it.
quote:All of which is, again, more on the point of 'more wealth could have been generated with a different system' which isn't actually a refutation of Lyrhawn's argument at all.
I don't think that's true; the Civil War was a direct consequence of slavery, same as the cotton exports. If you're going to count up the wealth effects of the one, why not the other? Apart from not supporting your argument, I mean?
quote:On the other hand, they hand-waved a lot of that money into existence by creating unbacked currency to pay soldiers and many war bills. This is money that it's unlikely would have existed if not for the war, and was America's first experiment with an unbacked currency.
I really have no idea where you're going with that, but in any case the greenbacks are just an administrative device. The little slips of paper are irrelevant, the question is what happens to loaves of bread, tins of meat, and young men. Whether they are moved around by direct force, appeals to volunteer, or promises that are later inflated away is all one; the point is that a lot of labour and capital is spent shooting people and breaking things instead of feeding people and building things.
quote:If we can't even agree on the fundamental point I made, that we have a moral imperative to help those the government intentionally disadvantaged
Let me know when you have a way to help out the slaves, or indeed the sharecroppers.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:I don't know, I don't remember what it was and I'm too lazy to dig through 150 posts to find it.
You wouldn't need to. It was maybe three or four posts of his back, addressed in response to a statement you made?
quote:I don't think that's true; the Civil War was a direct consequence of slavery, same as the cotton exports. If you're going to count up the wealth effects of the one, why not the other? Apart from not supporting your argument, I mean?
Now that you have arrived at a new argument-which is not that slavery generated no wealth that had an impact on modern America, but that any that it would have was offset by the Civil War-maybe we can talk about that.
Before we do, though, I have to wonder if you have anything other than the vaguest speculations for that argument? I'm not sure how you could, since not long ago you were arguing that slavery generated no wealth that would impact the present for the civil war to offset. Some might question how scientific that sort of reasoning is. Promises to be a meaty discussion.
quote:Let me know when you have a way to help out the slaves, or indeed the sharecroppers.
Is this merely a dubiously honest gotcha or are you claiming it was ever anyone's argument that something could be done to correct the past in the past? Some quotes along those lines would be great, unless you're still feeling lazy.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:When you look at why the average northern soldier volunteered (for those who did volunteer), I think you'll find the backbone of the army (at least the early soldiers) was made up of people who felt slavery was wrong, not people who wanted to remake the south for economic reasons so the upper classes could invest and make money.
Sure, I agree. I don't see the relevance.
quote:I'm not sure how you could, since not long ago you were arguing that slavery generated no wealth that would impact the present for the civil war to offset.
And I stand by that, subject of course to future arguments that don't boil down to "the plantation owners were rich"; so when you offset zero by the costs of the Civil War, what do you get?
quote:are you claiming it was ever anyone's argument that something could be done to correct the past in the past
Obviously that is not what Lyrhawn thought he was saying here:
quote:we have a moral imperative to help those the government intentionally disadvantaged
but that's our basic disagreement: Lyrhawn wants to justify reforms today as reparations for injustice done to the slaves, and I think that's nuts. You can't repair an injustice when both victims and perpetrators are long dead. If reforms are needed, fine, let's have them on their own merits; what our great-great-great-grandparents did has no bearing on that debate.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:You can't repair an injustice when both victims and perpetrators are long dead.
If I'm a member of native american tribe and we had had an area of land guaranteed to us by treaty, because it's pretty much the most sacrosanct homeplace of our people, and then it was taken by force from us about a hundred years ago and sold to a mining and timber operation, meaningful reparation for my tribe is possible whether or not the people who originally did it to us (and the people who it was done to at the time) are dead. You can "repair the injustice" by taking the land and giving it back to us. This is a meaningful correction. The idea that it wouldn't be is a fairly easy to dismiss concept.
And if we are talking about the victims and perpetrators of systematic injustice and discrimination against blacks, they are very much so alive.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yeah. To reiterate Sam's last sentence to KoM -
I know the conversation veered toward slavery and the Civil War heavily at times, but if you want to focus on direct, living victims of government mandated discriminatory policies, you don't have to look very far. Millions of them are still alive today.
quote:but that's our basic disagreement: Lyrhawn wants to justify reforms today as reparations for injustice done to the slaves, and I think that's nuts. You can't repair an injustice when both victims and perpetrators are long dead. If reforms are needed, fine, let's have them on their own merits; what our great-great-great-grandparents did has no bearing on that debate.
That's clearly not our disagreement.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:if you want to focus on direct, living victims of government mandated discriminatory policies, you don't have to look very far. Millions of them are still alive today.
That's fine, then we can by all means discuss them. I'm just saying that has nothing to do with slavery.
quote:You can "repair the injustice" by taking the land and giving it back to us. This is a meaningful correction.
No, it's not. The idea that it is, is very easy to dismiss. Watch me dismiss it, very easily. Poof! There it goes! Dismissed! That was easy, wasn't it!
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:I'm just saying that has nothing to do with slavery.
I am fairly positive you are saying more than just this but if you want to amend the scope of your statements down to this, it would remove the need for correction.
quote:No, it's not. The idea that it is, is very easy to dismiss. Watch me dismiss it, very easily. Poof! There it goes! Dismissed! That was easy, wasn't it!
Yeah things are pretty easy when they don't bother to be substantive.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:That's fine, then we can by all means discuss them. I'm just saying that has nothing to do with slavery.
That's most of what I was talking about from the very start. Somewhere along the way my argument got truncated. But if I spotted you all of slavery and said I'm not arguing for reparations for that, only for stuff that happened after, I'd still have a very solid argument for my case.
The discussion got sidetracked on the Civil War and slavery, but you don't really have to look back all that far to find victims of systemic oppression. Even if you want to argue we stopped most of it in the 60s (which isn't a very good argument, if you ask me, but you'd have some evidence to try it), that doesn't really ameliorate the situation already created by decades (centuries) of that oppression, whose effects are visited upon future generations kept from ever moving up.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
